Getting a weird turbo-boost following yesterday’s East Coast earthquake, stocks blasted to their biggest winning day since, well, two weeks ago.

But that’s really saying something, as two weeks ago we were in the middle of a gigantic relief rally that followed the crash of a week before.

This had a similar feeling to those big swings, with everything moving in one direction, and picking up strength at the end of the day. The Dow finished up 322.11 at 11176.76, right about at its highest level of the day. The S&P 500 jumped 3.4% and the Nasdaq rose 4.3%.

Fans of Dow theory will be pleased to see that the Dow transports rose 3.3%.

Fans of hedge funds will be glad to hear that the leading sectors in the market were energy, tech and consumer discretionary. These happen to be the most-favored sectors among hedge funds, according to a recent Goldman Sachs report.

Fans of small things will be pleased to see that the small-cap Russell 2000 rose 4.9%.

Meanwhile, gold came off the boil finally, breaking a six-day winning streak. And Treasury yields rose to their highest level in nearly a week.

All of these are healthy signs of risk appetite. The coaster at the Brazilian steakhouse that is the market was flipped to green. Only poor Bank of America was left to bob alone, Pip-like, in deep waters, its stock and CDS prices back to financial-crisis levels.

The question is durability, obviously. We’ve seen this before, recently, and seen how abruptly the coasters can be flipped back to red.

There’s not much on the calendar today to change appetites. Durable-goods orders are due, but they are too old and too volatile to move the market very much. Asian stocks suffered overnight from yet another sovereign downgrade, this time of Japan, but European shares are making an effort to keep risk appetite alive, despite dreary business-confidence numbers in Germany.

In what might be a sign of the tenuous nature of that appetite, the market rallied yesterday on some pretty bad economic news — worse than expected new-home sales and another dismal regional factory survey. That suggests this rally is being fueled by hopes of a gift-wrapped stimulus package from Ben Bernanke at the end of the week, which further suggests that we are being set up for disappointment.

Morning MarketBeat Daily Factoid: On this day in 1857, the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company failed, triggering the Panic of 1857, one of the worst financial crises in US history, with effects that lasted for years. It may also have contributed to the Civil War: The south suffered much less in the crisis than the north, encouraging southerners to believe in the superiority of slavery as a basis for an economic system.

-Mark Gongloff

MARKET SNAP:

At 6:00 a.m. EDT, S&P 500 futures are 0.7% lower at 1151.1. European bourses are higher, with the FTSE 100 rising 0.3%, the DAX 1.2% and the CAC 40 0.8%. In Asia, stocks closed in negative territory, with the Nikkei 225 down 1.1% and the Hang Seng down 2.1%.

Dycom Industries’ fiscal fourth-quarter earnings more than doubled as the telecommunications contractor’s sales acceleration continued and it improved margin. Shares were up 9.9% at $15.20 after hours, as the results beat expectations.

La-Z-Boy swung to a fiscal first-quarter profit on higher revenue and a tax benefit, as the furniture maker reported stronger same-store sales and margin. For the quarter La-Z-Boy posted a profit of $45.5 million, or 85 cents a share. Shares fell 10% to $6.86 in after-hours trading as profit excluding a favorable tax-asset valuation change was short of estimates.

There’s not much in the way of meaningful economic data today. Durable goods orders are due at 8:30 a.m. ET and will get some attention, but they are a) old and b) volatile. Economists think they rebounded 2.4% from a 1.9% swoon in June. See what I mean?

We also get weekly mortgage-applications data from the MBA at 7:00 a.m. There has been a pickup in demand for mortgages as interest rates have hit record lows, but the ability of consumers to actually get loans is a different kettle of fish.

At 1:00 p.m., Treasury auctions off 5-year notes. Demand was strong for the 2-year auction on Tuesday, and this might be no different — unless we’re in the middle of another stock-market rally.

Key Earnings

After the bell, we get Applied Materials earnings.

6:00 a.m. EDT, S&P 500 futures are 0.7% lower at 1151.1. European bourses are higher, with the FTSE 100 rising 0.3%, the DAX 1.2% and the CAC 40 0.8%. In Asia, stocks closed in negative territory, with the Nikkei 225 down 1.1% and the Hang Seng down 2.1%.

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